Taliban promises bloodbath during Saturday's Pakistan elections

The al-Qaeda linked Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistan
branch of the Taliban, has announced its intention to launch terrorist
attacks all across Pakistan on Saturday, in order to disrupt the
presidential elections. The elections are considered historic, since
they'll mark the first time in Pakistan's history that there has been
a peaceful transition from one civilian government to another.
Already, more than 100 people have been killed in terrorist violence
in the days leading up to the election. The TTP have been
particularly targeting the "secular" or Shia political parties, while
leaving alone the Islamist anti-American parties, the Pakistan Muslim
League-Nawaz (PML-N) of Nawaz Sharif and the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement
for Justice) party of Imran Khan. On Thursday, a son of former prime
minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was kidnapped and two of his aides killed.

Nawaz Sharif is expected to win the election, but with millions of new
voters, anything might happen. Pakistanis are desperately looking
for a "hope and change" candidate who could solve all their problems
in a moment, and Imran Khan, the former world cricket champion and
international playboy, has been advertising himself as that candidate.
However, in a stroke of fate, Khan was hospitalized early this week
after a campaign appearance where he accidentally took a hard fall and
fractured a rib and damaged three vertebrae, forcing him to give one
final televised campaign appearance from his hospital bed. Whether
this will sink his campaign, or conversely, whether he'll get a big
sympathy vote, is something we may learn on Saturday. Daily Times (Pakistan) and BBC

New South China Sea confrontation between China and Philippines

Philippine authorities admitted on Friday that one of their coast
guard ships opened fire on a Taiwanese ship on Thursday, saying that
their only intention was to disable the ship, which was threatening to
ram the Philippines ship. Both ships were within overlapping 200-mile
economic exclusion zones (EEZs) of Taiwan and the Philippines.
However, one Taiwanese fisherman was killed in the incident, and both
China and Taiwan are protesting the killing. China has repeatedly
made it clear that they are going to use their vast military power to
take control of the entire South China Sea, including several regions
that have historically belonged to other countries, following a policy
similar to Hitler's "Lebensraum" policy. They've announced that they
intend to begin boarding and seizing control of other countries' ships
in the South China Sea. The Chinese are supporting the Taiwanese in
this incident, because China has also indicated that it intends to
take control of Taiwan. LA Times

Syrian women get married for money in exchange for 'survival sex'

There are over 500,000 refugees from Syria flooding Jordan, most of
them women and children. But aid organizations do not have enough
money to fully support these refugees, so in order to make the money
to feed their children, many of the women are opting for short-term
marriages in exchange for several hundred dollars. "The men are
usually between 50 and 80, and they ask for girls who have white skin
and blue or green eyes. They want them very young, no older than 16,"
according to one marriage broker. BBC

Gun-control issue dives deeper into farce over 3D printing

Gun control farce reached new heights on Friday when the U.S. State
Department ordered Cody Wilson, head of Texas nonprofit Defense
Distributed, to remove from its web site the blueprints (CAD file) for
the successful manufacture of a gun using an $8,000 3D printer.

When I wrote about gun control and 3D printing in December, I pointed out that there's no evidence that
prohibitions in the past -- of alcohol, drugs, abortion and
prostitution -- had any actual effect, but they had a large negative
effect of creating bootleggers, organized crime, drug cartels and
prostitution rings. Gun control has already produced huge unintended
consequences in the form of would-be gun owners buying up all the guns
and ammunition they can find, for fear of losing the opportunity.

The other unintended consequence is the enormous interest in 3D
printers, which can manufacture small objects of all kinds. Thanks to
the spur given by the farcical gun-control debate, we can soon expect
to see thousands of gun manufacturers in garages and basements across
the country.

This reminds me of the 1971 book by Abbie Hoffman, Steal This
Book. The book contains instructions on everything from getting
free abortions to using a shotgun to hiding from the law. Many
attempts were made to prevent publication of the book, but when it
finally was published, it made it on to the NY Times Best Seller list.

So with all the publicity for John Cody's CAD files for 3D printing
guns, it's not surprising that the blueprints have already been
downloaded 100,000 times. The files may have been removed from John
Cody's web site, but they appear to be freely available on the Pirate
Bay file sharing site. AFP and The Pirate Bay and Abbie Hoffman - Steal This Book

Greece's youth unemployment rate now at 64.2%

February jobless figures are out for Greece, and they show that the
jobless rate expanded to 27%, up from 21.9% a year earlier. Worse,
almost two in every three young people aged up to 24 years are jobless
as the unemployment rate for that age group reached 64.2 percent in
February. Kathimerini

IRS admits Nixon-like targeting taxpayers for political purposes

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday acknowledged that it flagged
political groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names for
special scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, repeating
the kind of actions that were in the impeachment charges that forced
former president Richard Nixon to resign.

This comes on the same day that some members of the mainstream media
are turning against President Barack Obama over the lies and coverup
in the Benghazi matter. President Nixon was forced to resign because
of a coverup of the Watergate matter, where nobody was killed, while
four people were killed in the Benghazi matter. This is an
administration whose members believe that they can break any law or
say any falsehood and get away with it because the mainstream media
has always been totally in the tank for Obama, and would always find
some way to support him. Friday's turnaround could be politically
significant. Washington Post